At a rally organized by a far-right, pro-Trump organization, the ralliers were outnumbered five-to-one from counterprotesters. The rally largely went off without any incident beyond the two groups shouting and chanting at each other.

The protest was organized as a “Freedom First Flag Wave” by Bradley Burris, a New Mexico resident who hosted a Proud Boys podcast earlier this year. About 20 people at its peak showed up for that rally, some wearing helmets and other protective gear, while about 100 showed up at the counterprotest. The Proud Boys were joined by members of the Hiwaymen, a neo-confederate group.

New Mexico’s U.S. Senators said an internal government watchdog will provide answers about how the Trump administration seized land to build a border wall between the United States and Mexico. Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations Committee blocked an amendment one of those Senators, Tom Udall, introduced to the defense funding bill that would bar Trump from diverting money from military projects to fund the wall. In August, Udall and New Mexico’s other Senator, Martin Heinrich, signed onto a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois asking for an investigation into the use of eminent domain to take land for the border wall. All four senators are Democrats. GAO wrote to the four Senators last week saying they would begin the review the Trump administration’s eminent domain efforts.

“At the current time we anticipate that staff with the required skills will be available to initiate an engagement in about three months,” the GAO official wrote.

When a state agency settles a lawsuit, often times the public’s focus is on how much money the state settled for. But an often overlooked portion of legal battles with state agencies is how much the state paid for legal representation.

Since former Gov. Susana Martinez left office nine months ago, there have been a number of news reports about settlement payouts to a handful of former state employees for alleged workplace discrimination. Often, public scrutiny is aimed at the plaintiffs. In a high profile settlement involving former Department of Public Safety employees, New Mexico’s former State Police Chief, who was accused of sexual harassment, called the claims from his former employees baseless and accused them of extorting money from tax payers. But lawyers from two different lawsuits covered extensively by NM Political Report argue that there should be more focus on how much the state pays for long, drawn-out legal defenses to ultimately settle for hundreds of thousands of dollars, specifically when women are the accusers.

‘It’s going to be like a proctology exam’

In December 2017, less than a month after the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center agreed to cut a jury trial short and settle with a former medical resident, Anesthesiology Chair Hugh Martin broke some bad news to his faculty—they would not be getting bonuses that year.

“I regret to inform the faculty that due to the recent legal settlement with the former dismissed problem resident, Cyndi Herald, that the Department had to reallocate the monies I had planned to use for a retention bonus to pay the settlement legal costs to Ms. Herald/Attorney Lisa Curtis,” Martin wrote.

The “problem resident” Martin referred to, Cynthia Herald, had spent years in a legal battle with her former employer.

ByMarshall Allen, ProPublica | September 11, 2019

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Like most of us, William Murphy dreads calling health insurance companies. They route him onto a rollercoaster of irrelevant voice menus, and when he finally reaches a human, it’s a customer service rep who has no idea what he’s talking about. Then it can take days to hear back, if anyone responds at all.

Bernalillo County District Attorney Raul Torrez says he’s done waiting for a so-called “DA panel” to determine whether the Albuquerque police officer who killed 19-year-old Mary Hawkes in 2014 should be prosecuted. Instead, the first-term, Democratic DA in New Mexico’s most populous district wants the state’s highest-ranking law enforcement officer to decide. He has referred the case to state Attorney General Hector Balderas, according to a letter he sent to the Hawkes family’s legal team, which was obtained by New Mexico In Depth and the Santa Fe Reporter on Friday.

And according to the letter, the Hawkes case is just the first. Going forward, he intends to refer all police shooting cases to the AG for a second look if his special prosecutors return recommendations that no charges be filed against the shooting officer. Not so fast, says Matt Baca, Balderas’ spokesman and general counsel.

ByAkilah Johnson, ProPublica | September 9, 2019

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. GAITHERSBURG, Md. — Ritchard Jenkins reached into the black computer bag he keeps near his workstation at Graceful Touch Barber and Beauty Salon and rifled through medical papers, pulling out an envelope buried deep at the bottom.It was an unopened medical bill for $971.78, now 17 months overdue, that he had put out of sight and out of mind. Another unpaid bill from May for $447.13 rested in a nearby drawer.

The EPA has repealed a portion of the Clean Water Act that expanded protections for smaller water systems across the U.S. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Department of the Army Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works R.D. James announced the repeal at an event at the National Association of Manufacturers headquarters in Washington D.C. Monday.
The Obama-era 2015 rule defines “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) to include isolated waterways and wetlands, as well as seasonal streams and rivers that flow only part of the year.

As opioid manufacturers face increasing pressure over their role in the widening opioid epidemic across the United States, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas announced a lawsuit against eight members of the Sackler family, who own and operate Purdue Pharma.
Balderas called the family “perhaps the most deadly drug dealers in the world” and said the company used deceitful and illegal practices to market and sell opioids in the state.

OPINION & ANALYSIS

It was a mundane and typical American activity. Families doing their back-to-school shopping in an El Paso Walmart. Suddenly a gunman opened fire. Scores were killed and injured. But they were not targeted indiscriminately. His target was Hispanics. He sprayed them with bullets. Why Hispanics? In what is becoming all too common, the gunman posted […]

New Mexicans know exactly what they need to ensure each and every one of our families can succeed: fully funded public systems like our schools, hospitals, and roads –all vital for a prosperous state. Unfortunately, this may not become a reality for N.M. if the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of adding a controversial […]

This coming Thursday, the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) will vote on whether to spend an additional $1.8 million to continue plans to dam the upper Gila and San Francisco Rivers. That is on top of the $15 million they have already spent. It is far past time to scrap this doomed plan to remove […]

Too many times have I heard New Mexico scorned as “The Land of Entrapment.” Too many times, as a New Mexico college student, I’ve seen my peers feel as if they must escape New Mexico for better opportunities elsewhere. This is true even when they come from families committed to growing our economy and their […]

At the start of the last Congress, one of the first votes House Republicans took was on a bill designed to unravel protections for workers exposed to chemicals like beryllium. Beryllium is one of the chemicals that poisoned my father’s lungs and caused his cancer. Watching House Republicans vote against the health and safety needs […]

The State Land Office announced the cancellation of grazing leases to a company owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the now-deceased disgraced financier who committed suicide before facing trial for sexual misconduct charges.